from the moving-forward dept

We're in New York City today making a couple of exciting announcements that I wanted to share with everyone. First up, we're launching a new offering as part of the Techdirt Insight Community called Smart Dossiers. As it stands today, it's quite difficult for companies to get good, knowledgeable analysis of companies, both private and public. In the financial sector, you get some coverage from "professional" analysts, but 65% of companies are considered "undercovered" with 35% having no coverage at all (according to a Reuters profile). And, all of those focus solely on the financial side, rather than understanding a company as a potential customer, partner or competitor.

With that in mind, we knew that the members of the Techdirt Insight Community were uniquely qualified to help solve that wide gap in the marketplace, and we've set up the Smart Dossiers offering in response. Companies can now get a SWOT (strengths-weaknesses-opportunities-threats) analysis on any company they'd like, with a minimum number of guaranteed perspectives from qualified, proven experts in the Techdirt Insight Community. Those experts are competing to provide the best possible analysis, continually ensuring quality analysis. Imagine being able to get a detailed, quick, analysis from multiple different people who have experience and knowledge about a specific sector. Actually, there's no need to imagine it, you can do it, right now. There are a variety of Smart Dossier packages available depending on what your company needs, starting as low as $995.

On top of this, we're also thrilled to be announcing a partnership with Thomson Financial, allowing Techdirt to distribute research from the Techdirt Insight Community (including Smart Dossiers) through Thomson's leading platform for providing research and analysis. Thomson offers deep real-time and after market research to thousands of institutional and business customers in 70 countries via professional subscription networks, including First Call and Investext, and we're thrilled to be a part of that system. As Keith Ackerman, Thomson Financial's Global Head of Next Generation Research, said:

"Thomson Financial views the addition of the Techdirt offering into its portfolio of research as significant. Our financial services and corporate clients have increasingly asked for and are spending more for insights, custom surveys and other kinds of research emanating from the use of expert networks and other types of social media. Accordingly, Techdirt and other high quality alternative research firms that feature these capabilities and research outputs are an important part of Thomson Financial's product strategy."

We're announcing both of these at O'Reilly's brand new Money:Tech event in New York, which looks like it will be very exciting. If you happen to be at the event, please make sure you say hello! Otherwise, if you happen to need a quick and useful detailed analysis of any company, check out Smart Dossiers today. Finally, if you think you have what it takes to provide this kind of analysis to companies around the world, please apply today!

Re: Free?

So you are charging? I think a better business model would to give it away for free. You will make tons of money.

I sense your mocking us (or me in particular) due to my business model/economics stuff. However, this fits in exactly with the business model discussions we have. The goal of any business model should be to charge for what is *scarce*, not what's infinite. And one major scarcity is content that has not yet been created. Here's a case where the information is clearly scarce, so it makes sense to charge for its creation.

Re: Re: Free?

Another scarcity is with *timely* access to such information once created. You certainly could charge for access to a temporarily gated version of the information.

Your model would take into account that the value of the access decreases with the age of the information. And you needn't waste resources on DRM or whatnot; paying customers giving copies away would be de-valuing their own investment in that resource.

An investor looking for keen insight isn't about to widely distribute key information until after they have had a chance to review and invest. It is that time-lag during which the resource is most valuable.

Re:

Yes, but it is no longer "timely" after, well, time. So the fact that the information is made widely available after the costs of creation (plus expected/reasonable profit), the freedom (and freeness) of the information becomes a BENEFIT to the producer in that people who missed out on the timely access (i.e. initial, paying consumers) will desire to be first in line for the next batch.

Of course, all of this assumes that the information being produced is (a) valuable enough for initial consumers to pay (i.e. they know what to do with the information) and (b) seen by others as initially valuable in the long run (i.e. they see that earlier initial consumers benefited from their early investment).

If the product sucks, it isn't worth anything regardless of access/freedom/scarcity.

Why the Cowards

We seem to go through this every single time with the anonymous cowards.
Do you cowards (sorry, you leave no actual handle to call you by) actually read Mike's articles?

Like Mike said, before the information and analysis exists, it is scarce (or non existent). So the company that so desires it pays for the contents creation. Sure, once it is created, it can be copied to the net if it wasn't already an electronic copy, which it most certainly was.
BUT, it no longer belongs to Mike, Techdirt, or the creators. It belongs to those who paid to get the content created.
What they do with the information after it is created is their business. If they want to give it away for free to everyone via the internet, Mike and the Techdirt IC would probably love that, as it would act as free advertising.
However, it is not theres, so they will not give it away.

Why do you cowards love to forget facts and then say "AH HA! Gotcha!" every time. Your argument never changes. And every single time we have to point out why you are still wrong.

DRM Lockdown

RE #3

Anon. Coward, the scarcity is, as has been said, the fact that the content doesn't exist until a client pays to produce it. Custom content is available, for a fee, in .pdf format.

Instead of asking Mike if Smart Dossiers will be free, why don't you ask Mike if he will be locking down those PDF documents with DRM, or watermarks? Why not ask if he will take legal action against his clients if he finds they have shared a PDF? Why not ask if he will be scouring the Internets looking for unauthorized copies? Or asking ISPs for the identities behind IP addresses of sharers? Or putting "honeypot" versions of his PDF on Gnutella, but with bad information in it to "burn" freeloaders? ...geez I could keep going on this list for a while.

So, ask Mike if he's doing that, OR if he's built a marketplace for custom research from a stable of subject-matter experts, with the ability to create a real-time response to a custom research inquiry.

In brief, your implied analogy sucks. A music industry analogy for this service would be if Mike had some top quality musicians and moviemakers on staff. Now, if a music fan wanted a custom bit of music produced to their needs, Mike could charge the client to produce the tune in short order.

As for the fact that the PDFs aren't going to be locked down, and customers could share them: Talk about great free promotion: having dozens of Smart Dossier printouts scattered around desks on Wall Street!

Lastly, you goof, you're are looking at the free part of the equation right now. Are you that gifted at ignoring the obvious?

Mike's suggested model is: Give something (I'll spell it out for you: www.techdirt.com) for free, sell something that's scarce (custom research). At this point, it just seems like you have a learning disability. To be someone who actually reads the arguments, but understands so little. To think you actually believed you had a "Gotcha!"

In #11, you or some other Anon Coward suggest that Killer lacks a sense of humor. Are you now trying to say #3 was a joke? Forgive us for not taking it as such, because a poster named Anon Coward (and others) have seriously argued your position for years now.

I don't know about Killer, but as for me, I don't work for Mike, but I am a Techdirt blogger, and in the Insight Community. It does provide 0.8% of my income.

Sense of Humor

Anon coward,

I have a sense of humor. Look at my paragraph #2. If you didn't pick it up, I was using sarcasm to poke fun at you, while simultaneously illustrating how there are no analogous comparisons to be made. Look, I even wrote "Internets" to make fun of Ted Stevens!

Maybe I should have put the words "poo" in there and aimed a little lower.

And the last reason I know I have a sense of humor is because my mom says I'm quite witty.

Silly Anonymous Cowards

Yah, if that was an attempt at humor, it really would be hard to pick up on it for the exact reason Derek mentioned. Too many of you peoples come through here trying to convincingly argue with lines exactly like that.
So sorry for taking you to be one of them.
Try adding a little smiley emoticon to your post when trying to be funny. Helps prevent confusion.

And no, I don't work for Mike, or TechDirt, or even the TechDirt Insight Community.
I just come to this site to get the tech dirt. And after reading the arguments of many people who made statements such as yours (they weren't joking though) and reading all my Mike's and other posters rebuttals and analogies, I have found I tend to side with Mike's and similar people's opinions.
I can't honestly say I enjoyed Econ classes, but I love technology, and the economics they mention here really do sound like they would work perfectly for the markets and scenarios he targets them at.
Watching the back and forth for a year I can say I am pretty solidly set with my current opinions on these topics.

Just gets old seeing peolpe try to argue otherwise with insanely week arguments.